Research Paper output of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft

Paul Kedrosky started a discussion which John Battelle followed up on R&D spending by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Attached graphes show 3 players' research publications covered in two major engineerring databases- Compendex and Inspec and their patents in USPTO and Espacenet from Engineering Village



Google


















Yahoo


















and finally Microsoft's




















And here is a summary for these 3 R&D players showing their research publications since 2000 in Compendex and Inspec databases from Engineering Village














I would love to have the opportunity to meet with some of the researchers from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and understand better their information seeking behavior while they are doing research.

I am wondering how many of them are using (or even heard of) Engineering Village, Scopus or Web of Science and how many of them are relying on the free web?

Notate: a workflow solution for researchers?

I haven't tested yet but Notate which is still in beta looks very interesting for workflow applications. via Pierre Lindenbaum

"Notate is a web-based tool for annotating and tagging words and phrases within documents. It creates a searchable index of all the annotations you make and displays the annotations against the text they refer to when you revisit a site. Annotations can be kept private or can be shared within a group such as a lab or journal club."

" The idea for Notate grew out of the problem that although the scientific literature is increasingly available online, it is almost completely unindexed and only minimally tagged. Reference citations take you to the top of a paper that may be many pages long, instead of the actual place where the quoted statement is made. We ought to be able to do better than this given the potential of modern web browsers to offer a more interactive experience, and let people make more use from the huge volume of papers and other documents on the web."

Corporate Engineers Information Seeking Behavior

The paper written by Britt Mueller, Greg Sorini and Elizabeth Grossman looks at Qualcomm users and it is one of best that I have seen in explaining corporate engineers information seeking behavior. I think everyone who is trying to develop products or serve corporate engineering market should read it.

Thanks to Jay Bhatt from Drexel University, for posting the article at KnowledgeSpeak Blog which they introduced recently.

Here are five key behaviors that the authors have identified. (all quoted from the paper)

• Engineers generally like to help themselves to information. They will also use colleagues as a resource, but often rely on the library as a last resort or not at all.

• Books are critical to this population. They are comfortable with and use electronic resources, but also have a strong preference for accessing what can be considered more traditional library resources such as books and other physical items.

• This population often has a cycle for information gathering where the need for information changes drastically depending on the development phase of the project. They can have an extensive need for information during times of exploration and understanding on projects, but at other times, when their “heads are down” in terms of actual product development, they may seek no information at all.

• Information seeking from this group is generally in response to very specific problems or projects. They often seek answers to immediate problems, and need information quickly.

• Proximity of services and facilities is important. When interviewed, most engineers wanted a physical library or reading room in their specific location. We also observed that when engineers were reminded or informed of services, they used them
  

Back from Israel

Every family has one or two major highlights from their vacation, ours will be tagged as war, when we had to explain our 6 and 4 years old kids, why there was a war, why we have to show our bags to security guards in front of the supermarkets, restaurants or coffee shops.....

As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated in his address to the knesset

"We [Israel] fight for everything that everyone in the enlightened world takes for granted and never imagined that they would have to fight for – the right to a normal life. "

This picture was taken on July 12, when we visited Peki'in a Druze village (in the Northern Israel) which was hit by Hizbullah rockets few days later.

Besides the war we all enjoyed and had a good time travelling in the Golan and Negev.

I came back last Sunday but the kids and my wife are still in Israel and they will extend their trip and return probably mid-August.